Chevrolet to stop selling cars in India? EDIT: Confirmed on page 8

This is a discussion on Chevrolet to stop selling cars in India? EDIT: Confirmed on page 8 within The Indian Car Scene, part of the BHP India category; Originally Posted by PraNeel
Who is going yo buy these 2000 units with all these rumors? And if they announce ...

Who is going yo buy these 2000 units with all these rumors? And if they announce their exit officially, then how are they expecting to sell these units? People are already shy of GM and now all this!!

If they plan to sell, I would be ready to take one (though at a decent discount). I am using AVEO UVA for 9 yrs and is an extremely practical car for sedate driving.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nav-i-gator

Being an existing Beat owner, I don't really care about GM operations in India. Beat has been an excellent companion, no major niggles in 7 years (76000KM) of ownership so far, but GM's play here in India has been negligible. So it wont make any difference to me if they completely wind up (new car owners have to worry though). What I need is OTC sale support of spare parts.

Chevy cars are no rockets employing any state-of-the-art technologies anyway. I will be more than happy to service it on local garages provided spares are available

In my ongoing 9 yrs of ownership, the major issues for were
1. Battery replacement: after 5 yrs
2. thermostat flanges got rusted and broke: 8th yr- had to be replaced
3. CAM Shaft sensor failure: 9th yr, had to be replaced

Even now the vehicle does not have any major rattles and finish is very durable. On this aspects, I wouldn't mind going for another chevy and can manage with local service centres.

I don't know what's up with GM's top management. They keep on pulling out of market after market.

India is not alone in the latest round of GM's supposed "restructuring". They're selling off their South African & East African plants to Isuzu, and are pulling out of those markets as well.

The 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent Uncle Sam bailout had kind of transformed GM into "Government Motors". It looks like they're still trapped in that mentality (always taking the easy way out).

It's tragic to see any brand exit the market, even more tragic for one which was among the top five or six a few years ago.

It's Opel all over again for Chevrolet owners. Whatever resale value their cars have will slowly evaporate.

It looks like a private launch of the facelifted "Intelli Beat" will be held (along with the Essentia maybe), just for the Uber/Ola operators. Why bother launching anything now?

Wow, didn't expect this so soon! There were possibilities for sure, but I thought GM was going to give it a last shot with the new essentia and the refreshed Beat. Guess the essentia is only for export markets now. Opel first and Chevrolet now, 2 we'll know brands sinking in India due to sheer product not being up there. They were one of the very few MNCs to have a very wide range of cars under 10-12 lakhs and yet faced failure.

It was shocking but we have to accept it as reality! I was on the verge of selling off my car but with this news i think there is no point is going to the used car market now. The only sensible option seems to be to keep the car as long as possible. The availability of spares will also not be that easy considering we won't have the authorized service centers.
What are the owners on the forum going to do?

U.S.-based General Motors Co. is likely to stop selling its Chevrolet vehicles in India but the world’s third largest carmaker will continue to manufacture and export cars from the country, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told BloombergQuint requesting anonymity.

The company is expected to make an official announcement on Thursday that it will shut down the Indian sales arm– Chevrolet Sales India Pvt. Ltd. The carmaker’s India head, Kaher Kazem, had visited the global headquarters to discuss the details, said the people quoted above. A team of senior officials from the U.S. is currently in India, they said.

“We do not respond to speculation. As we have said on numerous occasions, we are currently evaluating our future product portfolio,” General Motors India said in a statement to BloombergQuint. “Our product launches are progressing to plan and we continue to implement our consolidation of manufacturing at Talegaon,” it said.

Being an existing Beat owner....What I need is OTC sale support of spare parts.
Chevy cars are no rockets employing any state-of-the-art technologies anyway. I will be more than happy to service it on local garages provided spares are available

Yes the cars can be repaired at local garages, however parts are a big problem. Spares shops get the spares from dealers, remove the MRP sticker and sell at exorbitant prices. Substitute parts are not good in quality. Coupled with GM's stupid policy of very less child parts, it is a nightmare to source genuine parts.

Sell it, before you regret it. Keep it only if you plan to continue with it for next 5 years. Service will become difficult for sure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doo_Dev

If they plan to sell, I would be ready to take one (though at a decent discount).

You are lucky to face less issues, but trust me sourcing parts is a real pain. Bumper locks, rubber seals, side mirrors, brake pads are regular items and they are not available in the market. In service center due to no child part policy you are ripped off royally. So either be content with substitute parts or get ripped off. For example to replace the ORVM mirror, one has to replace the whole mirror assembly in beat. Cost Rs. 2500 + taxes. Genuine mirror not available in market. So be content with a Rs. 100 plain mirror. Gear knob cracks, replace the whole gear stick for Rs. 2000.

GM says it would no longer market its Chevrolet brand - its only brand of cars marketed in India - despite India's promise as a market set to overtake Japan as the world's third largest in the next decade. But it doesn't plan to leave India entirely.

It plans to keep operating its tech centre in Bengaluru and to refocus its India manufacturing operations by making one of its two assembly plants in India – the one at Talegaon, about 100 km (62 miles) southeast of Mumbai – into an export-only factory. It plans to sell the Halol plant in Gujarat to Chinese joint venture partner SAIC Motor Corp .

"We are not giving up benefits India offers as a local cost manufacturing hub with an excellent supplier base which is extremely competitive," Stefan Jacoby, GM's chief of international operations, said in an interview.

Jacoby said the move to turn the Talegaon assembly into an export-only plant will not impact GM Korea and its position as an export hub. India will export vehicles mostly to Mexico and South America, among other destinations, while GM Korea will ship Korean-made cars to North America, Southeast Asia, Australia and Pakistan.

Dan Ammann, GM’s global president, said the restructuring actions for India announced on Thursday in essence cancels "most" of the plan GM unveiled in 2015 to invest $1 billion in India to deploy newly-designed vehicle architecture as part of a Global Emerging Market vehicle programme or GEM for short, and build a new line of low-cost vehicles in India.

The decisions to significantly scale down GM's operations in India are results of months of analysis over "where we are going to place our bets (globally) as a company," Ammann said in an interview.

Ammann said GM looked at many options but determined that the investment originally planned for India would not deliver the kind of return other global opportunities offered.

The GEM vehicle architecture, which is being engineered as an emerging-market platform technology for markets such as China, Brazil, Mexico and India, was envisioned to help GM come up with more cost-competitive cars. But for India, GEM was still too pricey a technology since it has been designed under GM's global vehicle safety, performance and other standards.

To be successful in India, Jacoby said one option for GM was to "give up on implementing global platform and vehicle standards". The other was to team up with a local partner to run full operations as an automaker designing products and manufacturing and marketing products locally.

"We have made the decision that these two options are not for us," Jacoby said.

After reading the above article I have only one thing to say "LOSERS"!!